


Sarah By Any Other Name

by AntiKryptonite



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Character Development, Chuck POV, Chuck Versus Santa Claus, Chuck Versus The Balcony, Chuck Versus The Bullet Train, Chuck Versus The Tooth, Chuck Versus The Wookie, Developing Relationship, F/M, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Seasons 1 through 5, Through the Years, season 4, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiKryptonite/pseuds/AntiKryptonite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the moment he saw her standing at the Nerd Herd desk, Chuck Bartowski has loved the woman he knows as Sarah Walker. Five scenes in five different years that illustrate the changing, maturing love Chuck holds for the mysterious CIA agent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alana Trefaux

\---

October, 2007

\---

The green door—as green as an Irish clover—taunts me with its ordinary appearance. The gold knocker placed in the center of the wooden surface begs me to lift it and let it tap out a request for entrance. Yet I make no move. The pizza’s heat bleeds through the cardboard box to warm my hands, and still I cannot lift them to knock on her door.

Her door.

Inside, she’s probably waiting to yell at me, and justly so. I did hand over a diamond to a woman who didn’t have our best interests in mind and was perfectly willing to leave Sarah behind to pay with her life for our theft. And, to top it off, I had made some pretty inappropriate comments, some harsh accusations, some jealous asides.

But despite all that, what weighs the most on my mind, what makes my knees weak and my stomach empty and my hands still, is the hopeful trepidation that skitters through me like arcing lightning bolts.

I so want this night to go well. I want, desperately, some proof that the spy bodyguard assigned me by the CIA thinks about me as more than a bungling asset who just happened to get a computer stuck in his head. Maybe that is all I am, essentially…but I want her to think more of me.

I want…I want something real.

So here I stand, wanting to go in, afraid of what will happen when I do. Desperate to connect with her on a deeper level than just the professional one she’s thus far insisted on. Terrified that I’ll once more lose all sense of proportion when I look into Sarah’s eyes and that I will again start hoping for impossible dreams and improbable futures.

In the end, I am only able to lift my hand and tap the knocker by reminding myself of the assurance Carina—who presumably knows Sarah much better than I do, certainly knew about Bryce way before I did—gave me. The assurance that Sarah does, deep down, feel something for me.

The door opens almost immediately, and Sarah leans quietly against it. Instead of the stern expression I’ve halfway been expecting, she is smiling softly at me, and I find myself once again taken aback by how beautiful she is.

“Hey,” I manage to say softly, setting down the bag of napkins and drinks on a side table in order to open the box of pizza. “Vegetarian, no olives.” I’m surprised by how intently she looks down at the pizza, as if scrutinizing it for any trace of a hidden olive. As if suspecting betrayal even in something as simple as a meal.

And why shouldn’t she?

Hasn’t she herself poisoned others at a meal?

But this isn’t a meal like that. This is a meal with _me_ , and I wish I could somehow convince her that I’m not trying to get to know her just so I can poison her.

“It’s the only thing I know about you that’s true—you don’t like olives.”

She leans her head against the door, and a small, private smile curves her lips, and she looks, suddenly, very young, very vulnerable, very tentative. It’s a Sarah I haven’t seen before, but already I like it.

“Thank you,” she says so softly it’s almost inaudible. “Come in.”

It’s not exactly the effusive gratitude Morgan would have offered, or the homey solicitousness Ellie would have demonstrated, but the quiet, shy demeanor draws me in just as surely.

“Thank you,” I murmur, knowing well how much that invitation means coming from her. I follow her in and then stand there uncertainly with the pizza in hand as she closes the door behind us.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Sarah in the past month, it’s that she is perfectly content with silence. I, on the other hand, am not so comfortable with the absence of all words, the quiet that makes me think of all the worst things anyone else could possibly be thinking about me. So I rush to fill the silence even before it can begin. Rush to speak before Sarah remembers that she is angry with me and loses her smile.

“Look, I’m…I’m sorry about the beach. You’re absolutely right—I shouldn’t let my feelings affect the mission.” It’s a true statement, but I’m also pretty sure it’s impossible. I don’t know how to be a spy—don’t really care to know how to be one—and it would be pretty miraculous if I suddenly stopped caring so much in the next few days. But it’s what Sarah wants to hear, so it’s what I say. And I _am_ sorry…just not necessarily about the diamond.

Sarah walks to the bed where her computer and some random papers lie, and sits on the edge. I follow her, unwilling to put even literal distance between us lest it translate into emotional separation as well. I scarcely spare a glance to where I set the pizza behind me, locking my eyes on Sarah as I sit on the coffee table before her and look up at her, willing her to realize just how sincere I am.

“And, um…if you and Bryce…” Despite how painful it is, despite the memories of Jill and planted tests and the pain that consumed me to hear Sarah was his too, I force myself to finish. “If you had a… _thing_ …well, that makes sense. He always got the great girls.”

Amazingly, she smiles at the compliment, though I’m sure she must have received much more eloquent praise from a hundred other more successful men. Received that and more from Bryce. Yet she smiles at my clumsy compliment as if it means something to her, and she looks down with what almost looks like the hint of a blush on her cheeks. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Whether it’s real or not, I press on, actually encouraged rather than intimidated by her silence. After all, she hasn’t stopped me with some lecture or warning yet—that’s got to be a good sign.

“I just wish I knew something real about you,” I tell her honestly. Looking up at her, I feel as if I’m begging her for this tiny sign. And maybe I am. “Can’t you just tell me—just one true thing? Just…just one—like, like where’d you grow up?” Wincing at the audacity of that question, I hastily add, “Or—or if that’s too much—and I-I get it, I get it if that’s too much—w-what’s…what’s your name? What’s your real name?”

But of course, she says nothing. Disappointment is starting to worm its way inside me, its sting undiminished though I knew this would be the most likely outcome of my request.

Because as much as I wish things are different, much as I conveniently forgot the other words of warning Carina had conveyed, I know that Sarah doesn’t really belong here. She’s a spy, forbidden to let any personal details slip lest they later be used against her. She’s an agent, tasked to keep herself strong and unaffected.

I ask her real name, but I know she won’t give it, know that I ask the impossible. She’s Sarah Walker here—Sarah Walker to me—but the Intersect had flashed images of a different her through my mind, the her that she had been while in France.

Alana Trefaux had gone to dinner with several French diplomats and been the only person to walk away from the table alive. But Alana Trefaux had disappeared from off the face of the planet so Sarah Walker could appear.

And I’m terrified—sickly, wake-up-in-the-night-with-chills terrified—that one day Sarah Walker will disappear just as quickly and as permanently as Alana Trefaux did. That one day I will go to work at the Buy More and find out that the woman I want so desperately to know has vanished forever so that another beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with an unspecified name can take her place in some other more exotic locale. That I will lose Sarah Walker and any glimmer of a chance I might have with her.

It’s a fear I can’t shake, a nightmare I can’t wake from, the reason I try so hard to hold onto something of her. Because she deserves better than having to constantly reinvent herself without even the slightest anchor to keep her grounded to who she really is inside. And I’m just foolish enough—or deluded enough—to think that I can, possibly, be that anchor for her. For Sarah Walker. Or for Alana Trefaux. Or for whoever she chooses to be just so long as she’s real.

So I ask even though I know she won’t answer me. I beg even though I know she can’t give it to me. Because I want her to know I’m here. I want her to know that _I’m_ real so that she can be too.

“ _Middle_ name?” I ask when the silence goes on too long, when she shifts as if she’s uncomfortable. “What’s your middle name? Can’t you just tell me your middle name?”

But she’s regarding me with a steady gaze, and her eyes—grayer than I’ve ever seen them before—hold something that looks a lot like fear. Fear of giving in. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of _me_. And more than anything, I don’t ever want her to be afraid of me, don’t want her to lump me in with all the others she deems a threat, don’t want to be responsible for hurting her.

So I look away to hide my own hurt and hope and fear, and I let it go. “I’m gonna…go and go get the napkins.”

And I stand and walk away, putting the distance between us because I know she needs me to. Because if anyone knows what it is to be afraid of being hurt, it’s me.

Abandoned by my parents, ridiculed in school for a variety of reasons, betrayed in college by my best friend and my girlfriend—those things taught me to protect myself, to hide behind what Morgan calls my camouflage, my tendency to tell jokes and put myself down and laugh nervously, all part of my means of protecting myself from being hurt by others. And Sarah…well, she has so much more reason to hide herself away than I do, so much more to protect herself from.

And no matter that I want her to be real with me, I can’t strip her of her means of protection, can’t make her set aside her own form of camouflage, can’t put her in danger. So I let her keep her distance and her façade, and I walk away and pretend it doesn’t hurt, pretend it doesn’t matter, pretend it’s all okay even though it isn’t, even though I don’t even know how to breathe properly anymore, I’m so scared all the time.

I reach the table where I’d set the napkins…and I hear it. Or I think I do. A tiny voice, a soft tone, a vulnerable truth.

“It’s Lisa. My middle name is Lisa.”

My hands, on their own, automatically finish their movement to the bag, and I open it on auto-pilot. Inwardly, I am stunned, the disappointment that had been lodged within me scattered like sand in the wind.

It’s real. Her confession is real, I know it instinctively, intrinsically, irrevocably.

She told me—not to my face—but in response to my plea.

The concession is so enormous, so startling, that I can do nothing other than continue to move as I try to process her answer.

Lisa.

The name itself, though now indescribably precious to me, doesn’t matter. What matters is that she _does_ know I’m different, knows that I won’t try to poison her, won’t hurt her. She’s still hiding, still pretending, still not ready to give up everything, but then, I’m the same. Both of us afraid, both of us unsure, both of us reaching out nonetheless.

I had thought I alone felt it, had been ready to give up, but this…this changes everything.

I’ve been given what I wanted, established a connection between us, and oddly, I feel within me the same fear I saw in her eyes. I had wished so longingly that she would give me this truth, yet conversely, I now feel myself daunted by the responsibility of it. And suddenly, strangely sure that I might just need more protection now than I ever have before in my life.

Strange how dangerous a pair of gray eyes and a soft voice and a tiny, momentous truth can be. Strange…but undeniable.

And I wonder if I will ever get to tell her that, ever get to reveal that I heard her quiet confession, ever get to let her know just how much I want to be there for her always.

For the first time, I think that maybe I will. Because for the first time, she’s trusting me just as I trust her.

And that…that is a truth as amazing as Sarah Walker.

\---


	2. Jenny Burton

\---

December, 2008

\---

The tree farm around me, made ethereal by its inherent transience, seems a lot like a forest, one ideally suited for this particular season. It smells of pine sap and rain, the droplets of which smear against my face as I run. The dark green boughs smother all noise, dampening the far away sounds of police sirens and radios, smothering the lights of the Buy More and the media crowd that is congregated around it. The rain seems more like a mist, and when I pass my hand across my forehead, I can’t tell whether sweat or condensation moistens my palm. Christmas Eve, and I’m surrounded by unadorned Christmas trees. On the face of it, a perfect setting.

Save the fact that outside of warm homes, bare of all lights, the trees seem more like haunting sentinels than cheery symbols.

Save the fact that my friends and family are outside this dark, cold forest, trapped in what should be a perfectly innocent, if somewhat crazy, store, held at gunpoint by a man who easily fooled me into thinking he was just in over his head.

Save the fact—worst of all—that I am running. Running away. Running away from _Sarah_.

Earlier—had it been mere moments ago or an entire eternity compressed into seconds?—I had been running too, running from a man I knew to be oh so much more ruthless than I could possibly understand unless I compared him to the likes of Emperor Palpatine and Sauron. Only…only those were fictional characters, created solely to be evil villains in order to foil the heroes. Mauser, though, had been real and alive and dangerous enough to destroy my life.

Had been.

A spark of light refracts off raindrops to sparkle silver, and I flinch back from the familiar color, stumbling and falling to my knees on the chilled ground, clutching fistfuls of damp straw. A flash of remorseless blue eyes ghosts across my vision, bestowed by my memory rather than the Intersect, and I squeeze my own eyes tightly, uselessly shut against any further recollection.

Earlier, I had turned back to help Sarah because I thought leaving her behind was cowardly. Because I thought I could help her. Could make her wait for back-up. I thought I was the cause of her being here at all—not only because of her duty to her country and the mission, but because she had promised me she would protect me.

“Trust me. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”

Shivers tear their way through my body, and I have to clap a hand over my mouth to keep myself from vomiting at the foot of a crooked pine tree. I wish I could go back to before I turned to help her, wish I could erase what I saw, wish I could close my eyes and see Sarah smiling at me and delicately fingering the charm bracelet as if afraid to find it only a mirage.

But I can’t.

I can never go back.

Eventually, I stand up and begin running again, moving toward the welcoming siren call of the Buy More. It’s an unlikely protector, but I irrationally hope that the store that sheltered me after Jill’s betrayal can do the same again now, after Sarah’s…

What do I call what I saw?

Murder?

Execution?

Slaughter?

Resorting to any means to keep her promise to me?

Which, in a way, makes _me_ responsible for the bullet between Mauser’s eyes…doesn’t it? After all, he wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for me.

This time, when I stumble, I catch myself on the boughs of a tree that sends icy droplets down my collar to trickle along my spine. But at least I can see the Buy More now, the red and blue lights of the police, the white spotlights of the media, the—

I frown suddenly. I _think_ those are real police officers and reporters…but what if they’re not? What if their façade turns out to be as fake as Ned’s innocence, Mauser’s authority…Sarah’s heroism?

Vicki Vale, Morgan had called her, yet I’d only known her a few days before I realized that while she is as beautiful as the comic book journalist, she has infinitely more in common with Batman. A hero, giving up friends and a past and any right to a real name and all hopes of a personal life in favor of protecting the greater good, fighting for her country, and helping those in danger.

But Batman doesn’t carry a gun.

Batman doesn’t kill.

Batman…is a comic book hero, two-dimensional, able to shove people off buildings and throw them in vats of acid and tie them to bridges without worrying about reality finishing them off for him.

But even in the real world, Sarah isn’t supposed to shoot defenseless men who surrender peacefully. She’s not supposed to be…terrifying.

My steps slow and I try to wipe the horror, the panic, the confusion off my face, in order to pass the crowd hovering at the edges of the Buy More parking lot. Sarah’s instructions to me—given just before she shot the Fulcrum agent—are blurred in my mind, something about going to Castle, but the CIA team must have moved in already because the Buy More is open again and people are coming and going freely.

Numbly, not sure what I should do now, unable to push away the dark memory crowding my mind long enough to think it through, I simply walk straight through the Buy More’s open doors, just as I do nearly every morning. I receive the vague impression of blue-uniformed cops everywhere, Buy More greenshirts and nerd herders milling about, a mess of scattered Christmas decorations, fake snow, and electronics knocked carelessly to the ground. Details beyond those pass me by, requiring too much effort for me to retain them.

“Chuck!”

Something within me shrivels inside at the sound of _her_ voice calling my name as if nothing had happened, as if she were simply greeting me after a long day wiping down counters and serving frozen yogurt at the Orange Orange. I’d even believe it if my knees weren’t still bruised, my hands cold, and my mind frozen on that instant I’d seen only once yet had replayed through my mind’s eye a hundred times.

And still, despite that instinctive distancing, I find myself immediately turning to face her, to look at her, find my arms automatically opening to receive the hug she gives me, her face alight with a smile. I have only time to notice—one detail alone out of hundreds that suddenly leaps out to grab my attention—that her lip no longer obviously bears the blood and bruise given her by Mauser. She looks as deceptively fresh as if she hadn’t just fought and killed a man in the midst of dozens of pine trees.

She looks innocent.

She looks happy.

Then I have time to notice nothing more because she puts her hands on my face and pulls me down to place a delicate kiss on my lips. I wonder if I imagine the tremor that ghosts through her body and travels through my fingertips. Wonder if I imagine that her hands tremble ever so slightly. Wonder if I imagine anything of what I see in her.

It’s a quick kiss, over before I have a chance to fully realize what’s happening, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she stands on her tiptoes and hugs me tightly. I can’t help but wrap her in my arms, surprised to feel her warming beneath my touch and only with that realizing just how cold she feels, her body as chilled as the boughs I had grabbed hold of to keep from falling.

When she pulls back, she takes hold of my hands, seemingly eager not to lose contact with me. Then she smiles up at me, her eyes alight, her voice filled with delight, her hands in mine strong and sure. “It’s okay—you’re safe. I got the Fulcrum agent.”

The ambiguity of that statement strikes me like the sound of the gunshot, dampened but no less fatal.

“You’re safe,” she says, as if that’s all that matters. As if there isn’t a man lying on cold ground littered with straw, staring sightlessly up at the night sky, a bullet lodged in his skull. As if she hadn’t pulled the trigger with my mother’s silver charm bracelet dangling from her slender wrist.

But…surely she can’t just pretend that she didn’t kill a man mere minutes ago. How can she smile with those images playing and replaying through her mind? How can she look at me so happily when my very existence requires her to kill on my behalf?

“What happened to him?” I try to keep my voice even, but it wavers a bit, marred by the dryness of my mouth.

She smiles again, and her eyes shine brighter than the Christmas lights decorating so much of Burbank. “I arrested him. Casey’s taking him to a secure facility—as we speak.”

The ground disappears beneath my feet. The store spirals away from me. All I can feel, all I am conscious of, is the feel of Sarah’s warm hands holding onto mine.

It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. I thought she was real, thought I could trust her, but she’s no more real than Jenny Burton. I had trusted that too, held onto that piece of information thinking it was a piece of the her-that-had-been…but it turned out to be a lie, just another con, just another mask. She hadn’t even been the one to tell me, had let her dad give away that piece of information, had said nothing when I realized I was right back to square one.

A lie. Jenny Burton, her smiles, her answers—all lies. She’s my handler, and why had I ever let myself believe that not everything she said was geared toward winning my cooperation? No wonder she told me to run and not turn back. No wonder she wanted me out of the way.

How many other times has she or Casey killed the people they told me they arrested?

How many lies have there been over the past year?

Do I know _anything_ real about the woman I called Sarah Walker?

Sarah Walker, after all, is just as much a façade—a ruthless one—as Jenny Burton.

Even worse, as astonishing as this is, I realize now that it’s nothing new. They’ve lied before; they’ll lie again. My world is changed forever because of what I saw under that clouded night sky, but in reality…in reality, nothing has changed at all.

And now _I_ have to lie, have to pretend, have to put up a façade, have to convince her that I didn’t see her killing an unarmed man who had surrendered. Because if I find out the truth…what would happen? Would they lock me up? Finally produce that bunker I’m threatened with so often? Take me away from my family and friends?

Reading the terror flashing through my eyes—attuned to me as she always is—Sarah tightens her hold on my hands. “It’s okay,” she assures me, and look as hard as I might, I can see no sign that she is lying. She either sincerely believes her own words or she’s a much better actress than I believed possible. And then she lies again, and I know with a sinking heart that it’s the latter. “He’s going to go to jail. He’ll never bother you again.”

In vain, I search for a hint of remorse, of guilt, of terror at what she just had to do for my sake and might have to do again. My hands are cold and limp in hers, and I know she feels it, can see the worry darkening her eyes, note the gradual failure of her bright smile. And even now, even with her deceptions exposed before me, I can’t help but feel a flicker of disappointment at the cessation of her smile. It’s so rare to see her happy.

But then…this isn’t true happiness. This is…is…is satisfaction at doing her duty. It can’t be happiness because…because that would mean that she either loves killing people—and I saw too clearly her hesitation and the terrible, blank look on her face when she pulled the trigger tonight to believe she takes any pleasure in executing anyone foolish enough to threaten me—or…or she’s actually relieved that I’m once more safe. Relieved that _I’m_ safe. As if she cares about me.

But how can I trust that? How can I ever know? If I hadn’t seen her shoot Mauser, I would have believed her when she said he was arrested. So how can I ever know what’s true and what’s a lie?

I can’t.

I can’t know. I can’t believe her. I can’t trust her.

So I try to smile in order to allay her suspicion, but it fails almost before it begins, sickly and weak. For once in my life, I cannot speak. The words are swallowed up by the hole gaping within me, sucked in by weight of the pressure building up inside of me. All I want to do is let loose a torrent of accusations or demands for truth or small, broken questions. But none of those can be voiced, so in the end, I say nothing at all.

It’s unusual enough that I’m sure Sarah would comment on it, but she sees something over my shoulder, and she drops my hands and moves away. I curse myself for feeling bereft when my hands fall empty to my sides, and slowly turn to face my sister.

Ellie hugs me and says something, but I don’t catch the words, can’t take hold of them past everything else spiraling out of control around me. I fake a smile and a semblance of a reply, but luckily, she is already turning from me, her attention shifting to something else.

Sarah.

Ellie smiles at her and takes hold of Sarah’s metaphorically blood-stained hand and compliments the charm bracelet that was once our mother’s.

And I freeze.

The nervousness I’d felt when choosing that gift for her, the hope that leapt within me upon seeing her reaction to it, the giddy relief that possessed me after I’d all but told her I considered her a real girlfriend…it all comes back to haunt me now because it is tainted by the memory of seeing the charms dance and recoil from the force of the gunshot.

And now Sarah stands in the midst of my family, and I know Ellie and Awesome both think she belongs with me, with us, but for perhaps the first time, I seriously doubt my attachment to her.

It’s based on lies, after all. Deception and lies and half-truths and ambiguous statements. How can anything real or valuable or long-lasting come from that?

But…Ellie is standing there, and I lie to her every day now, and justify it by telling myself that the deception keeps her safe.

Am I, then, a façade? Am I just as fake as Sarah Walker or Jenny Burton? Just as ruthless?

Or am I really protecting her?

Is Sarah really protecting me by lying to me?

I don’t know. And that’s what scares me. I don’t know whether to believe the haunted look Sarah wore out in the cold or the smile she exhibited while reassuring me of my safety. I don’t know whether to believe the look of longing I see hidden within her eyes whenever she shares my family or the cold look I so often see in the Castle when she’s reporting to Beckman. I don’t know what to believe at all.

Except…when Sarah looks away from Ellie and meets my eyes for one, suspended moment, I think that Sarah Walker is more real than she wants me to think. That she cares for me more than her superiors would care to know. That she wanted to kiss me, needed to hug me, maybe to draw strength, maybe to recharge after being drained by what is required of her by country and promise.

But then she looks away, and once more, I’m not sure. It’s all so easy when she’s right there next to me, but so much harder to explain away when it’s just me. And I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad.

I want to believe her, want to believe what I see in her, want desperately to trust her. But then, if something’s too good to be true, it usually means it isn’t—Jill taught me that.

And let’s face it—Sarah Walker ever being interested in a nerd like me has always been too good to be true. It’s impossible. But then…so is everything else in my life.

I just wish I could know for sure, once and for all, whether it—whether _she_ —is a lie…or a dream come true.

\---


	3. Sam

\---

May, 2010

\---

The sterile surroundings, smelling heavily of hospitals and mothballs, seem to close in around me, shrinking inward to the cadence of Casey’s heavy footfalls as he walks away. My fellow inmates fade into the background as if they don’t exist, and I can’t even admit to myself that I fear my fate will be the same as theirs. The table beneath my hands is firm—the only solid object that registers—but it offers me no comfort, and I don’t dare reach out and take hold of Sarah’s hands.

I’m afraid.

Afraid that I really am crazy. Afraid that the Intersect I’ve only just been learning to accept and embrace is destroying me from the inside out. Afraid that I’ll be stuck in this mental institution forever.

Afraid that Sarah doesn’t trust me. Afraid that she will leave me. Afraid that she pities me.

Afraid that she doesn’t love me enough.

Things had finally been so perfect, so right, so everything I never thought could or would happen to me. Sarah was with me, smiled at me, laughed with me, even agreed to move in with me, spent her evenings with me not because she was required to but because she wanted to. Everything wrong in my life had disappeared…and now this. Betrayed by my own mind, by the Intersect I’d learned to think of as mine alone, by the dreams I’d believed in.

But I haven’t given up. I don’t dare allow myself to even consider the possibility that Dr. Dreyfuss is right. Because I need to believe that I’m okay, need to believe that this will all be over soon, need to believe that the tooth tucked away in Sarah’s hand will be the answer to seeing me out of here and back in the apartment I share with her.

But…what if _she_ thinks I’m crazy? I know how I sound, know what Casey was thinking when he looked at me with such uncharacteristic sympathy, know why the orderlies watch me so carefully. I don’t believe that I’m crazy, but if Sarah looks at me as if she does…well, I think that then I might believe it. I think that then I might just stop trying, might just get used to wearing pajamas and a robe all day and start making friends here among my fellow ex-spies, might give myself up to the Intersect and its effects.

And so I avoid her gaze for an infinitesimal moment, looking after Casey, scanning the claustrophobic surroundings, watching the doorway where Casey, free to leave whenever he wishes, has disappeared.

I can’t lose her. I know that more surely than I know anything else. I’ve already seen just how far I will fall without Sarah, just how much I’ll lose all sense of purpose, all will to continue, all hope of a future—and that was when I still had Ellie and Morgan and Awesome. Now, not even Morgan knows where I am, and Ellie and Awesome have no idea that I’m in trouble at all. All I have is Sarah, but that’s okay because when push comes to shove she’s all I need. I came to that realization weeks ago on a train outside France.

So finally, daringly, I look at her.

And I don’t see her distancing herself. I don’t see her pulling away. I don’t see her erecting her walls once more and putting them between us.

Instead, I see her looking straight at me, connecting with me, reaching out to place a gentle hand over mine. Her eyes are sky-blue, the shade they always assume during her most tender moments, but touched with a hint of gray, the gray that appears whenever she’s sad, mute sign that she wants to cry but won’t allow herself to. Her hand on mine is steady, but she clasps my fingers with an almost desperate grip.

“Chuck,” she says, and there’s a touch of panic there buried deep in her voice, submerged beneath reassurance and a plea for my full attention.

“Sarah,” I say before she can continue, before I can hear whatever she might say about my desperate plan and my stubborn refusal to give up on my tooth theory. I want to appear strong, want to assure her that I’m fine, want to allay all her worry. But I can’t. I’m not calm, not strong, not fine. I’m terrified and lost and very, very close to breaking, and only my conviction is keeping me upright and smiling and _trying_.

Sarah meets my eyes without flinching, her one hand curled around the tooth I’d given her. She waits for me to speak, and I find myself falling in love with her all over again—still, continuously, always.

“You can’t give up on me, okay?” I try to smile at her, feel its grimness, attempt to firm it up with the hint of a chuckle, but even that fails.

Who am I to ask this of her? I’m nobody, a nerd who worked at the Buy More and had no aspirations until fate intervened. I’m not even a real spy, not really, not like Bryce Larkin or Cole Barker or Daniel Shaw. I feel inferior and lacking on my best of days, and now, dressed in the prison garb of this institution and with my very sanity in question, I don’t even feel qualified enough to look her in the eyes, to hold her hand, to say her name.

And yet, I’m the one she was willing to run away from the CIA for. I’m the one she agreed to move in with. I’m the one she’s sitting with right now, even though it means she’s surrounded by lunatics and madmen. I’m the one who can make her smile even when the world is all wrong. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?

I don’t know how long it will take to get this all sorted out. But I do know that as long as she’s with me, I _can_ figure this all out. I _can_ get out of here.

So, no matter that she deserves better, I ask her. No matter that I’m afraid of what this will mean for us, I ask her. It’s the same plea I’ve always made, the first heartfelt request I can remember ever asking, silently repeating it over and over in my mind in the days after my mother left and then again after my dad disappeared.

Please don’t leave me. Don’t give up on me. Don’t leave me alone. Please let me be enough, faults and all.

Sarah smiles at me, and I almost think she can see all of that in my eyes, can hear me voicelessly begging her to love me enough to get us through this, to believe in me no matter what, begging her not to throw the tooth away and cut her losses.

“I won’t,” she promises me, and instantly, relief floods through me like the waves of the ocean. “I’ll get it tested,” she adds, and I trust her implicitly.

I have loved Sarah almost from the very moment I met her, but I think I love her more in this moment than I ever have before. I wish I could tell her that, wish I had the words I need to convey just how much pure, overwhelming emotion rises within me when I look at her, wish I could give her as much as she gives to me. But there are no words in any language that could possibly say all that, so I say nothing, just look at her and hope that she sees all that I am feeling in my eyes, feels it in the strength of my grip as I turn my hand to intertwine my fingers with hers, knows it through all that I do for her.

We’re partners, her and I, and she trusts me to be right just as I trust her to see to it that I’m proven correct. I always knew we worked well together, but it was in Europe, each of us trying to give the other what we thought they wanted, that I realized just how seamlessly we could merge. Now, I enjoy a similar moment of clarity, of unwavering certainty that we are meant to be together, to work together, to love together.

The moment is broken when one of the orderlies, deceptively innocent with his hands casually resting in his pockets, interrupts. “Time to go, Chuck.”

I fight back an uncharacteristic urge to snap something mean, to shout out my anger, to take out my own fear and confusion and despair on the man who’s just doing what he’s supposed to. Grimacing, I look up at him, wondering how he got this job, why he’d want to work here. But then, it wouldn’t be as terrifying to be here if I could walk out whenever I wanted.

I wish I could. Wish I could keep Sarah’s hand in mine and just stride out the front door with my head held high as if I haven’t a care in the world. But I can’t. And maybe it’s better that the orderly escort me away. Better for me to walk away than to have to sit here, a prisoner, and watch Sarah Walker disappear out of my life as she had almost done just months previous.

When I turn back to Sarah, my heart in my throat, I am taken aback to see tears shimmering in her eyes. The gray has disappeared entirely, released to glimmer in the teardrops hovering at the corners of her eyes, caught by her eyelashes. In its place, there is only blue as clear as cold, crystalline water.

I lean forward to kiss her, needing that connection, that _touch_ , before I can gather the strength to rise and disappear into the bowels of this emotionless, hopeless place. She leans forward at the same moment, cause enough for the stirring embers of optimism within me that assure me everything is going to be fine. The tooth, when tested, will prove my sanity and my verity. Sarah isn’t giving up on me. Ellie doesn’t know anything, so she can’t worry. For the first time since I was dragged, protesting, into this institution, I actually don’t feel like I’m just trying to convince myself of the bright spots; I actually feel that they’re real and solid, as sure and strong and solvent as Sarah and my trust in her.

But the kiss says something different from Sarah, a more chilling message on her side. I can feel… _her_ fear, _her_ confusion, _her_ panic. And when I draw back to look at her, I see more than just worry behind her tears—I see terror, and I feel her hand almost spasmodically tighten over mine.

I kiss her again, hoping in that instant to reassure her, to strengthen her, to convince her that I _am_ fine, to tell her everything I hadn’t even believed myself moments ago. But it’s only a kiss, and I don’t know how much of my heart she reads in it. It’s only a kiss, but it’s all I have to give her, and maybe, just maybe, it will be enough.

All too soon, I have to stand up, have to detach my hand from hers, but looking down at her, I know that I didn’t misread her, that I did feel panic in her lips on mine. And only then do I realize just how broken and lost Sarah is, perhaps even more so than I am.

Sarah Walker has always been my protector, always stood up for me, always seen to it that I am all right. Even when she herself is hurt or exhausted or angry, she unfailingly checks to make certain that I’m unharmed, and I can’t even count the number of times she’s placed herself in the path of danger to protect me.

In many ways, I’ve come to think of her as completely untouchable, as invulnerable as Superman. How many times have I seen her walk right into a hail of gunfire and emerge unscathed, not a single hair out of place? How many men, all larger than her, has she felled without much obvious effort? How many explosions has she escaped from without injury? How many times has she saved my life?

Yet at this moment, she is not invulnerable, not untouchable, not unscathed at all. At this moment, she is struck down by her own weakness—not Kryptonite, but her own fear of abandonment.

Sam. She had whispered her real name to another man, but I had heard her, and through the aid of a rifle scope, I had seen at point-blank range the lost and hollow look that had shadowed her face and tightened her features and sent tiny tremors through her frame. Through the earphones, I had heard the waver in her voice, the tentative wariness in her tone, the tears she chased away through sheer strength of will.

I don’t know that she has ever been more broken than she was in that moment, clutching desperately at straws in an attempt to reclaim some stability in her life. I don’t know that I have ever been more hurt than I was then, seeing her give away something I had been quietly—and sometimes not-so-quietly—begging for since I had discovered she was a spy. I don’t know that I have ever seen that same level of desperation in her since that day…until now.

Before Sarah came into my life, I was stuck, trapped in a moment of time that had passed me by five years before. But Sarah…I think Sarah was trapped, too, frozen within herself because she had nothing to move toward and no experience in ever being loved. Every day, I realize just how much Sarah brings into my life and gives me…but only recently have I begun to realize that maybe, just maybe, I bring something into her life that she needs, wants, craves.

Maybe I’m just as good for her as she is for me.

It’s a crazy thought—probably crazy enough to justify my current surroundings. And maybe I’m only imagining the bereft expression painting Sarah’s features with loss when I turn to look at her over my shoulder. Maybe her being here at all is only a hallucination. Maybe her very existence is a delusion brought on by stress, wishful thinking, and mingled grief and hope.

If it is, though, if Sarah or Sam or whatever name she calls herself is only a figment of my imagination…well, if that’s the case, there are certainly far worse things than insanity. And mental institution or not, I pray that I never recover my sanity should it mean losing Sarah Walker.

\---


	4. Sarah Walker

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January, 2011

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Moonlight. Even more romantic than a sunset, Morgan assured me, and I find myself inclined to agree as I look out over the lush French countryside lit by the largest moon I’ve ever seen. White and shimmering and benevolent, it calms me and I feel my nervousness dissipate. The romantic atmosphere I wanted for this moment is taken care of, surely, unless Sarah has some strange aversion to moonlight that I don’t yet know about.

I mutter a quick prayer that this doesn’t turn out like the aborted restaurant proposal, then turn when I hear her emerge onto the balcony behind me.

She’s beautiful.

I catch my breath, swallowing it back to stop from gasping aloud. The moonlight seems to dance across her delicate features like water, and the stars are captured in her eyes so that they sparkle forth and blind me. A smile overtakes me because I can’t believe, even now, that I’m this lucky. Because I dare to hope that this might be one of the best days of my entire life.

She smiles back at me, and a knot I hadn’t even known was twisting my stomach unravels and disappears. When I tried this earlier during the setting sunlight, she had sweetly followed my lead, but the mission had taken precedence. Now, however…now the mission is over, and the whole of her attention is focused on me.

“Look at the moon, Chuck.” She points outward to the sky and I obediently follow the gesture to stare out at the scenery, more to catch my breath and recover my—relative—calm than to once more admire the view.

I love the way she says my name—even from the beginning, she said it often enough to make me wonder what her true feelings for me were behind her façade—and tonight, well, tonight the sound of it on her lips makes me envision a future with her, a future of hearing her say my name in just that way. A future I want so badly I almost cannot keep still, almost cannot keep from blurting out my question right now, almost cannot contain my impatience.

But this moment…this moment deserves a slow unfurling, a leisurely unveiling. So I look at the moon and I caution myself to patience. Take it slow, she had told me in Castle, and I’m trying, really, but when I’ve wanted this for almost as long as I’ve known her, this seems to me to be the very definition of the word ‘slow.’ I just hope she feels the same.

“It’s perfect,” I say and look back to Sarah because, for all its celestial splendor, the moon doesn’t hold a candle to Sarah’s beauty.

She’s standing here in front of me, and suddenly I’m not sure how to continue. As much as I love Sarah, as badly as I want her in every facet of my life, there’s always been a measure of tentativeness to our relationship, always been things I’m afraid to say to her, always been this underlying fear that if I release everything contained within me, she’ll flee. And even now, even with her smiling at me and her eyes shining in the starlight and her moving to stand only an inch in front of me…even now, I’m afraid. Not afraid of her, but afraid that this moment is too perfect to last.

And then she moves onto her tiptoes, and she brings her lips to mine, and all uncertainty vanishes. Because this is Sarah Walker, this is the woman I love, this is the woman I bought the ring in my pocket for, this is the woman who took on the whole country of Thailand to bring me back to her. So I take her face in my hands, framing her beauty without trying to cage it, and I kiss her again, earnestly, fervently, willing her to read my devotion in it.

And when she kisses me back just as intensely, I can’t help but smile at her. The movement breaks our kiss, but I keep my hands on her face for an extra instant, savoring the tickle of her feathery hair against my fingers, before sliding them down to cradle her hands in mine.

“I’ve been to so many places around the world, but…” Sarah says, and I listen closely, delighted every time she speaks without being prompted or confesses something of herself voluntarily or confides in me as she does no one else. “I’ve never been to a place as beautiful as this.”

There’s a part of me that inwardly high-fives Morgan and all his advice on the perfect setting. Most of me, however, is wrapped around the nervous exultation flowing through my veins like quicksilver. Surprisingly, my hands aren’t shaking at all, perhaps steadied by the feel of her fingers wrapped around mine.

“I have,” I tell her, looking back at the moon briefly just to remind myself of the truth of my words. When I look back at her, I know these are the truest words I’ve ever spoken. “Every day. Every morning I wake up and I look at you.”

I wonder if she’ll ever know how much of a miracle I consider it to be when I do open my eyes and feel her warmth beside me and see her asleep, trusting herself to me even in her unguarded state. I know I will never stop thinking of it as anything less than a miracle.

“When we brush our teeth tandem-style,” I continue and relish her laugh.

I wonder if she knows how many things I say or do just to see her lips curve up in a hesitant smile, just to hear her unpracticed laugh, just to see happiness turn her wary eyes as blue as the ocean.

“When we watch TV together,” I say, and wonder if she knows just how much I’ve always yearned for someone to be beside me in those most mundane of moments, from the small things to the large, watching TV or saving the world, reading a book or staging switch-offs like this.

“Whatever,” I say, and try to take deeper breaths to cure my sudden lightheadedness. “Anything. Always. Every time I look at you…it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”

I pause, horrified to discover that my eloquence has run out. That I’m not sure how to continue. Or rather, I know exactly what I want to say, am trying to work myself around to this question of all questions, but I don’t know how to get there. Because there have always been things I’ve held back. First it was statements like ‘I like you,’ or ‘I want to know you better,’ or ‘You’re beautiful.’ Later it moved to ‘I wish I could spend the rest of my life with you,’ or ‘Please don’t hate me,’ or ‘I love you.’ And then it had been ‘I want you beside me forever,’ or ‘I’m planning a future with you,’ or ‘I want to make you happy because you deserve all the best things in life.’ And now…now it’s only ‘Sarah, will you marry me?’

And I _want_ to say that now. Things have changed between us, and I don’t have to hold back. I know that. But I want to say it right, want this moment to be perfect for her, want to erase everything bad that’s happened to her in her life, want to banish forever the haunted look that shadowed her eyes during those first weeks after she rescued me from the Belgian.

“I just…” The words bottle up in my throat before spilling out too quickly for me to smooth them out. “I fe—I feel like I-I should be James Bond right now, you know, with—with you, in this moment. I-I mean—”

Sarah curls her fingers around mine and curves her lips in the way she does only with me. “I didn’t fall in love with James Bond. I fell in love with you.”

My impatience, my frustration with my own inadequacies, some of my nervousness, it falls away, and all that is left, all that exists, is the woman before me.

Sarah Walker, she had introduced herself to me, and no matter how many aliases she’s used over the years, she has always been that to me. Always been Sarah Walker. And now, now it’s just Sarah Walker regarding me with such a shining expression. Alana Trefaux, Jenny Burton, Mrs. Anderson, even Sam—all of those are gone, swallowed up in the woman I plan to marry no matter how long it takes or what I have to do.

And I don’t need to hold anything back anymore. I don’t need to hide the depth of my feelings for her, don’t need to cover up my love for her, don’t need to look away to keep us both safe. I can look at her, look right into her eyes, and I can ask her this question. I can say whatever I want because she accepts me wholeheartedly, loves me with everything she is—now and ever—holds me in her reawakened heart.

So I swallow once, pat my pocket to make sure the ring survived my earlier fight with those thugs, and I gather my courage. My future, my heart, my _everything_ teeters on the edge of this moment, dependent upon her response.

“Sarah, I’m—I’m, uh…I’m—I’m going to ask you a question right now, so please, don’t freak out, okay?” Only after I’ve said the words do I recognize how familiar they are, connect them to the request she made of me on the night of our first date. It seems strangely fitting.

Sarah nods her head. “I won’t,” she promises, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she already knows what I’m going to ask her. And maybe she does, but that’s all right. She’s a spy, but more, she’s always understood me, always seen straight inside of me. So if she knows what’s coming, that, too, seems fitting. But I want to ask her anyway, want her to know how completely in love with her I am, want to give her this—I hope—perfect moment since she’s been cheated of so many other normal, happy moments.

And, truthfully, I want this moment for myself too. Not the CIA, not the Intersect, not the greater good. Just me. Just her. Just _us_.

So I take a breath and, safe with her, I finally unleash the words I’ve been holding in for years. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Going on missions and saving the day and being heroes, but mostly though, I just want to be with you. At your side. Always.”

Her wide, jubilant smile encourages me, and my fingers tremble with my haste as I pull the ring from my jacket pocket. Her eyes drift down to look at the ring when I flip the box open, and I could swear a flush caresses her cheeks and a tremble shivers through her hands.

“Sarah,” I say, and I feel myself falling to a knee before her at just the utterance of that name which has become the most precious of any in the world to me. “Will you…”

Strange, maybe, that for someone who talks as much as I do—and I know I have a tendency to talk without stopping—I never do get that one, simple, four-word question out. Not fully. Not then, when the men sent by Beckman surround us and lead her away from me while I scream and struggle against them and fate. Not later, when Sarah sits shackled in a cell and sacrifices her own wants and needs and possibly her life for what she thinks I want, interrupting me before I can even kneel. And not when we sit together in a hospital hall, surrounded by the scent of antiseptic and sterile metal and janitors, after yet another villain is jailed and criminal organization toppled.

Even then, when I thought for sure I’d say it, I never do. I simply kneel before her, quiet, mute, looking at her and letting my eyes and my actions speak for me.

And that’s okay because I don’t need to voice that question. In truth, I think I asked it without words every time I smiled at her, or looked at her in the morning, or met her eyes in the mirror as we brushed our teeth, or sat together watching one of my favorite shows, or lay on the bed kissing to the rhythm of whatever song played on the record-player. I think I asked her with every beat of my heart.

And she answered with every beat of hers, just as mutely, as quietly, as I asked the question. And she knelt beside me, and she took my face in her hands as if she thought I had some good quality as worthy of framing as her beauty, and she kissed me.

And I didn’t need to say the question aloud, just as she didn’t need to voice her answer aloud. Because we both knew. Because Sarah Walker has always known Chuck Bartowski just as I have always known her. Because Sarah Walker belongs with me, always and forever.

\---


	5. Mrs. Charles Bartowski

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January, 2012

\---

The windows to the bullet train frame the countryside that whizzes past too fast for any details to emerge. Not that I would notice them even were we going slowly. My eyes are locked on the window, but I am conscious only of the woman sitting across from me. The comfortable chair is much more welcoming now that I’m not cuffed to it, and yet it seems too small to contain my nervous excitement.

I can’t help but dart glances at Sarah, closing my mouth tightly over the words clamoring to be let out. I clench my hands into fists inside my pockets and try to stop my knees from jiggling. Curiosity consumes me, along with a certain amount of concern for her, only understandable since this version of the Intersect almost stole my best friend from me.

And yet…Sarah is so strong. And she’s only had it for three days.

And I want, so badly, to know what she thinks of the Intersect. To know what she thinks of containing the abilities necessary to become a superhero. To know if she even notices any difference from what she feels all the time. To know whether she understands why I miss it so much even as I hate what it has done to the people in my life.

I fidget a moment more, but what little self-control I manage to gather and apply is banished by the realization that Sarah seems almost as unsure as I am. Her sidelong glances to me, her tiny shifts in position, her half-breath as if she starts to say something but stops herself…I can no longer keep silent.

My hands leap from my pockets as quickly as the words fly from my mouth, releasing the torrent of truths I’ve been trying to deny to myself and everyone else since I lost the Intersect almost a year ago. “It’s the coolest thing in the world, isn’t it?” I blurt out.

She leans forward to match me, and I am captivated by the excitement sparkling from her eyes like indigo diamonds. “The coolest ever,” she agrees, and my heart leaps within me.

The Intersect had yanked me into a life I never would have known I’d want, thrusting me into danger and intrigue that at times seemed enough to ruin everything it touched, yet it had also given me abilities and confidence and worth I had never had before. Or never _thought_ I had, anyway. Maybe it made me a hero, or maybe it only gave me the opportunity to become one as Ellie believes, but either way, I’ve missed it more than I ever thought I would back when I could only think how much I wanted to be rid of it.

“Did you do any parkour?” I ask, leaning forward to better bask in the light of her exhilaration, to enjoy her slowly growing animation, to let her know that I don’t blame her in the least for downloading the Intersect, that I don’t hold her possession of it against her. After all, it’s almost impossible for me to be mad at Sarah in the first place, let alone when she only makes such a dangerous move to save my life.

“Off a bridge, onto a moving truck, and then onto a car going the opposite direction,” she replies, her hands moving in illustration, brushing against mine and sending tingles of warmth through me.

I can see Sarah performing these feats in my mind’s eye and can’t help but exclaim, “Ohh, _awesome_!” I feel a sudden, irrational urge to leap to my feet and twirl Sarah around, as if this simple moment of connection between us in something so pivotal to my life—both in its presence and its absence—can make all our troubles disappear and our future, already so potentially bright, even brighter.

“You know,” Sarah confides, the slightest hesitance to her confession almost completely buried beneath her surprised revelation. “I’ve been a spy for so long, and I’ve never felt this powerful in my entire life—it’s incredible!”

There is a wistfulness to her tone that I hear and recognize because I have heard it in my own voice more often than I’d like to admit. I had, in a way, lost the Intersect because of Sarah, but I never wanted her to think I regretted the trade—because I didn’t. I don’t. Sarah is worth a thousand Intersects, every super-ability in the world, any job with the CIA, and I never want her to think otherwise. So I pretended it didn’t matter that I had lost most of what allowed me to survive in the spy world, ignored how much I missed how easy everything had been with the Intersect, tried to forget how unsure I became without it backing me up.

But pretending, ignoring, forgetting—none of those work to rewrite reality, no matter how much I often wish they did. And the wistfulness in her voice prompts a sharp twinge within me, a slight pressure on my heart. Because it’s hard enough to believe that Sarah’s willing to give up her spy life in exchange for a future with me—hard to believe she doesn’t hold her expulsion from the CIA against me—almost impossible to believe that she can give up something as amazing and empowering as the Intersect and go back to a normal—well, relatively normal—life with me.

But this is a fear I’ve fought for years, practically since I met her. It’s a fear that became obsolete the moment Sarah ran away with me in Europe, the moment I woke from a nightmare-made-real to see her, bruised and battered and terrified, leaning over me and begging me to wake up and come back to her so she could marry me, the moment she gave me her personalized vows and became my wife. It’s a fear that no longer has any place in the life we’ve made, together.

Still, I never want her to hold any regrets, so I sober and ask her, “Ready to say goodbye to all of it? The guns, the bullets, the parkour?”

Her hesitation, slight though it is, almost makes my heart stop. But I have always read too much into the smallest of things, and when she speaks, her voice is sincere and unforced, her eyes intent on mine, earnest and transparent. “I don’t want to live my life in danger anymore.” She places her hand, cool and soft, on mine, the feel of it reminding me of the fateful moment, almost five years before, when she rang the bell at the Nerd Herd desk and I touched her for the very first time, fingering her hand as if it were a mystery. “I’m ready to retire and start a family.”

I smile at her, unable to do anything else at the sound of her speaking so easily and naturally of a family, at the immediate thoughts and dreams of what that family might look like in a year’s time, in five years, ten years, a whole lifetime of years unrolling before me. Before _us_.

_Us_. _We_. I think those are my favorite words in any language in the world. Perfect for all they represent, almost magical in how they touch and influence and better my life. _Our_ life.

She smiles back at me, and the world seems that much brighter, the future that much nearer, my life that much greater. “Our future is exciting enough.” Reassurance and determination mingle together in her voice, and all the tension I hadn’t even realized I felt turns into liquid and drains away.

“Mm.” Mischief imbues me, flavored with relief, and I raise an eyebrow as my lips tilt lopsidedly upward. “You know, we still have a good bit of time before we get to Yamashira. And starting a family’s not something you can just, you know, jump right into.”

Her features reshape themselves into a demure expression, one that’s much too innocent to be true. I marvel again at how well I can read her now, the ambiguity and second-guessing of our first years relegated to the past, replaced by comfort, familiarity, intimate knowledge, complete acceptance. “Yeah, well, uh, we—we, uh, need some practice.”

There’s that wonderful word again— _we_.

After our parents left, it had always been Ellie and me, just us two against the world, but we had had such different goals and pursuits. After Stanford, I was trapped within myself, isolated by my pain and sense of betrayal. And after Bryce’s email…well, then, I had thought I was more alone than ever before, stuck in limbo between my old life and the spy life. But Sarah…Sarah banished my isolation and my pain and my uncertainty. She reached inside me, became as necessary to my continued survival as my oxygen or my very heart. She completed me, filling in all the blank spaces within myself and bettering everything already there.

And now…now there is no life without her, no life apart from _us_ and _we_ and _our_.

Mrs. Charles Bartowski. I tease her about the name, but I’ve always done that—hidden the strength of my emotions behind a veneer of humor. Because the truth is that every time I consider all that Sarah is to me, I all but explode with everything that I feel within me. For someone as alone as I was, having someone so amazing and complete and _there_ is more than a dream come true—it’s magic, pure and unbridled magic, like an everyday miracle.

I never would have guessed, at that first meeting or even on our first date, that Sarah would grow to encompass so much of my life. I never could have known at that hotel in Bristow that one day we’d be waking up together _every_ morning. I’d never dared to dream, during those bleak days after Prague, that Sarah would eventually be my wife.

Wife. Almost as good as—or better than—the other words I treasure so greatly.

“Lots and lots of practice,” I agree with a grin that probably ventures into the realm of suggestive goofiness. “Allow me to just hit the mute.”

Her soft smile of anticipation calms the fear gnawing at the back of my mind that any moment now she’ll start forgetting me. My mind is only halfway focused on the panel near the door of the cabin, and the Japanese symbols throw me off.

“I have no idea what any of this means. Is that a chicken button? Does a chicken come out when you hit the button?”

Impatiently, Sarah moves me aside. Instantly, the whole of my attention is on her as she flinches back a bit from the flood of images and knowledge the Intersect flashes through her mind. I’m much more used to being on the other side of the flash, but I take an instant to triumphantly conclude that it looks nothing at all like the expression she showed me while coaching me on how to fake a flash. I would mention that aloud, but in response to Sarah’s touch, a door slides open from the wall like in a Star Trek episode and reveals a small compartment with a bed.

“Hmm. Hey, well done!” I comment, fighting back another searing bout of terror that Sarah will be affected by these flashes as badly as Morgan was. But when I look back at her, there is nothing of a stranger in her eyes. It’s my wife looking back at me, stripping herself of her jacket and smiling alluringly at me. Who would have guessed that the spy who smiled so rarely could have so many different types of smiles—all beguiling and beautiful—hidden within her?

She says nothing, but she doesn’t have to. It’s all in her actions, in her looks, in her touches. It’s in her presence here, unhesitatingly making sacrifices and traveling halfway around the world to rescue me from anything and everything. It’s in the ring on her left ring finger and the love shining apparent from indigo eyes. It’s in the story we’ve already made and the chapters we’ve yet to fill.

“Domo arigato, Mrs. Bartowski,” I murmur aloud, happiness burbling up from deep within me, and I reach out to pull her against me. The jacket falls unheeded to the floor as I silence all my fears and concerns and worries, drowning them in the feel of her against me and the taste of her lips and the murmur of her voice saying my name as she always has. Soothing her fear and apprehension and uncertainty by holding her close to my warmth and kissing away the minute shivers running through her and whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

This— _us_ and _we_ and Mrs. Charles Bartowski—is real and forever and safe and perfect and magical. I doubt the Intersect removal will be as uncomplicated as Sarah wants me to think just because nothing ever goes that easily for us, yet no matter what comes, I know that my love for Sarah and hers for me will endure and grow and strengthen. Because together, we’re all that we need. Together, we’re enough.

Because a spy learned to trust a nerd.

Because a handler began to love an asset.

Because an agent didn’t leave her partner.

Because a woman said yes to a regular guy.

Because my wife will always come for her husband.

And I know that no matter what happens, no matter how many obstacles we encounter, no matter how many more times the Intersect or kidnappings or bad guys enter our lives—no matter all of that, I will never leave Sarah. I will, with every breath and word and deed, be the man she can count on. Because Sarah—by any name—is the love of my life.

And I know—with unwavering conviction, with unstinting faith, with unmarred trust—that nothing will ever change that.

The End


End file.
